Gap-junctions promote synchrony in a network of inhibitory interneurons in the presence of heterogeneities and noise

Abstract

Recent experiments revealed that inhibitory interneurons networks are coupled by both electrical and inhibitory synapses. Moreover these findings suggest that a population of interneurons operate as a clockwork affecting the processing of neural information. In this paper we determine, in the weak coupling limit, the parameter values leading to the emergence of synchronous regime in a pair of Fast Spiking interneurons coupled by chemical and electrical synapses. Then, our results will be compared with those obtained recently in [1] for a pair of coupled Integrate & Fire neural models. Next, the effects of heterogeneities and noise on the coherence properties of the network (containing two or more coupled units) will be investigated numerically. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.